Karzai Demands Risk Pushing U.S. to Total Afghan Exit

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's latest ultimatum was for the release of Afghan prisoners being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photographer: Massoud Hossaini/AFP via Getty Images

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s
expanding list of demands before he’ll sign an agreement for
U.S. forces to stay in his country is testing the Obama
administration’s patience and risking blunders by each side.

Unless Karzai backs off soon on his shifting demands and
his refusal to sign the accord until after Afghanistan’s
presidential elections in April, the U.S. may decide to remove
all remaining forces -- just as it did in 2011 when Iraq didn’t
agree to American terms for them to stay, Omar Samad, a former
Afghan ambassador to France, said in a phone interview.

Karzai, 55, is “overplaying his hand and he is now on the
threshold of crossing a red line not only with the U.S. but also
Afghan people in general,” said Samad, who now heads Silk Road
Consulting, a Washington-based geopolitical advisory firm.
“Karzai runs the risk of pushing Washington toward a zero
option and also reducing international assistance for a country
that can’t pay its own salaries.”

Karzai’s latest ultimatum was for the release of Afghan
prisoners being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He
delivered it two days ago to Susan Rice, President Barack
Obama’s national security adviser, who visited the presidential
palace in Kabul to tell the Afghan leader to stop dickering and
sign the accord providing for some personnel to stay behind
after U.S. combat troops leave by the end of next year.

Another Shift

Karzai today again appeared to shift course, telling local
Radio Azadi that he could sign the deal before the year ends if
the U.S. agrees to a “complete cessation” of Afghan home raids
and the start of a “practical peace process.”

“They can decide either to stay here or they can decide to
leave here,” Karzai said in the interview distributed by his
press office.

The U.S. has provided about $93 billion in military and
economic aid to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban after
the U.S. invasion in 2001, according to a report last month by
the Congressional Research Service. The U.S. has lost 2,287
lives in the country, according to Defense Department data
compiled by Bloomberg.

The U.S. and other international donors have pledged about
$6 billion a year in economic assistance for Afghanistan through
2017. In addition, the U.S. has said it’ll pay about $4 billion
annually toward the Afghan National Security Forces.

Karzai Criticism

Some Afghan political leaders are criticizing Karzai for
risking that assistance as he completes his second and final
term as president.

By refusing to sign the agreement, Karzai is “betraying
his own people,” Afghan Senator Hedayatullah Rehayee said.

A loya jirga, a meeting of 2,500 tribal elders that
gathered last week in Kabul at Karzai’s invitation, approved a
draft security pact that allows U.S. troops immunity from Afghan
prosecution and grants them access to nine bases in the country.
In exchange, the U.S. promised that counterterrorism raids on
homes in search of al-Qaeda suspects would be rare and led by
Afghan forces.

Over the years, Karzai has frequently resorted to
criticizing the U.S., seeking to play off sentiment among some
Afghans resentful of foreign armies from the Soviet Union to the
Americans.

‘No Gains’

In an Oct. 7 interview with the BBC, Karzai said the U.S.
and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have
caused “a lot of suffering, a lot of loss of life and no gains
because the country is not secure.” He said a return of the
Taliban to a role in the government wouldn’t “undermine
progress.”

Karzai is convinced that the U.S. has no intention of
leaving, according to Martine van Bijlert, co-director of Afghan
Analysts Network, a nonprofit policy group based in Kabul.

The Afghan leader believes negotiations over the security
agreement provide “the one leverage he has to influence U.S.
behavior in Afghanistan and he intends to use it as much as he
can,” Van Bijlert said in an e-mail.

“Because of the lack of trust, the more pressure is put on
him, the more he will probably believe that he is indeed
standing in the way of some specific U.S. agenda,” she said.

The two sides are still underestimating each other’s
position, Van Bijlert said. “On one hand, the U.S. is obviously
more keen to leave than Karzai thinks,” she said. “But it is,
on the other hand, probably less likely to fully pull out than
most Americans believe.”

Obama Blame

The Obama administration also shares blame for not
understanding how Karzai negotiates, David Sedney, former U.S.
deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Central Asia, said in a phone interview. He left the
position in May.

For Karzai, “going back five years, back to the 2009
elections, bargaining and re-bargaining with us has got him
better deals over and over again,” said Sedney, who also served
as a deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

As the two countries negotiated the Strategic Partnership
Agreement last year, the U.S. consented to Karzai’s demands that
the Pentagon hand over control of a prison it ran next to the
Bagram air base, Sedney said.

The Obama administration also ignored its history with
Karzai by sending Rice to meet with him instead of a more
frequent visitor such as Secretary of State John Kerry, Sedney
said.

Rice Meeting

“Every time a new military commander, ambassador or
secretary goes to meet him, Karzai always tests and pushes
them,” Sedney said. “There’s no history of people dropping in
on Karzai and getting good results.”

A White House statement summarizing Rice’s meeting said
Karzai “outlined new conditions for signing the agreement” and
indicated “he is not prepared” to do so promptly. Rice
“stressed that we have concluded negotiations and deferring the
signature of the agreement until after next year’s elections is
not viable” because of the need “to plan for a potential
post-2014 military presence.”

Karzai probably believes that he can survive this crisis as
he has many in the past “because the West has given him the
benefit of doubt for too long,” said Samad, the former Afghan
ambassador.